Oodbms

Can We Protect Ourselves On the Internet?

Although the Internet is a wonderful place to shop, explore and interact with other people we should always keep our guard up to protect our privacy. Privacy on the Internet is very important to anyone who uses the Internet and even for someone who has never been on line before. Most people do not realize how important Internet is in everyday life. Within most of our lifetimes the Internet has grown from an obscure military project to the greatest revolution since the Industrial Revolution. Computers have gone from machines that took up large rooms to be involved in almost every aspect of our daily lives, from the coffeepot the brews our coffee in the morning, to the car that we drive to work, to the sophisticated computer that we have our desk, computers are everywhere.

When we think of someone that steals our personal information off the Internet one of the first things to come to mind is a hacker. Hackers can be dangerous, persistent, and stealthy criminals. We are all vulnerable to hackers, the matter how vigilant we are. There are some things a we can do to protect ourselves. First we must realize how hackers attacked us. Hackers will target specific Internet connections such as a T1 connection. A T1 connection is a digital connection that uses a cable instead of the phone lines to connect to the Internet (Bates). The advantages of a T1 connection are that it is much faster than a standard modem connection. The advantage of the T1 connection to a hacker is the connection is continuous (Ulrich). The longer someone is connected to the Internet the longer a hacker can attacked that connection. Once a hacker is able to hack into a connection he is able to access all the information on the hard drive. The danger in this is that many people keep personal information on their computers such as credit card numbers, tax returns, social security numbers and his private e-mail (Federal Trade Commission).

I feel a bigger threat from hackers is that some hackers attacked retail companies through the companies' computers. Hackers use the same methods to attack a company as they would, to attack a private individual. Once they have access to a company's computer they are able to steal credit card numbers and personal information that a company keeps on record (Federal Trade Commission).

Hackers can take over our ISP numbers. An ISP number is the number that an Internet service provider assigns us every time we log onto their server. The technique for taking over and ISP number is complicated but anyone that can download a program from one of more than 30,000 hacker web sites can obtain an ISP number, user name and password (Noack). Once a hacker has an ISP number he is able to surf the web anonymously. Being anonymous on the web allows the hacker to commit criminal acts, such as hacker in other sites or launching viruses, without being detected (Noack).

Hackers are not the only ones who illegally take our personal information while we are on the web. Large respectable companies sometimes indulge in this practice. RealNetworks a software company that distributes a music player for our computers has recently been caught stealing personal information about our music listening habits. The popular RealPlayer software that they distribute sends information back to the company, when we long onto the Internet, without our knowledge (Smith). A company's even sell e-mail addresses to other companies, this is how we get some of our unsolicited e-mail known as spam (Federal Trade Commission).

Congress is trying to keep up with the growing technology but with the pace of technology this is a difficult chore. Congress has passed a couple of important laws to help protect us. Probably the most important one is the "Children's' Internet Protection Act of 1999"(106TH Congress). This law is designed to protect our children from the predators on the Internet. In makes it much more difficult to solicit information from children. Another important law the 106th Congress passed is "Consumer Internet Privacy Protection Act of 1999." This law protects consumers from companies that sell or give away our e-mail address with our permission. Even though the Congress is trying to respond to our needs they just can't keep up with the technology.

I feel the biggest problem with conventional law-enforcement in enforcing privacy laws on the Internet, is that most Internet criminals know how to keep ahead law-enforcement. Conventional law-enforcement officers are not trained in Internet security or Internet policing. Also law-enforcement is under funded for such training.

I think with some common sense and consumer awareness we can do a reasonable job of protecting ourselves. It is easy to fill safe in our homes and offices, but